A Moogle  🏳️‍🌈 💻 🎮 🎶 🇸🇪

Yes, but how does it work at all?

It doesn't. From everything I've read, royalty payments are inevitably a pittance for artists without a back-breaking amount of self-promotion, merch-flogging, and gig work. The entertainment industry, not just music, is founded on lies to ensure a steady stream of fresh meat.

I am not talking about the amount of money.

Sorry, at this point I'm honestly not sure - was it a legitimate question or a rhetorical one? I'm happy to discuss the extremely dry "finer" points of how it works, but I thought you were asking rhetorically as a means of venting.

No, not venting. I understand that royalty payments suck, and tbh I've been a SOCAN member for at least 7 years and this is the first payment I've ever gotten so I'm a bit confused is all.

If I had to guess, they've probably extended their content ID system to cover Facebook sometime in the past year, and some individual or group made a post using your music that ended up internally flagged. Their site makes no mention of FB , but it's my best guess.

SOCAN's "Royalties" page is generally pretty vague, but it wouldn't be the first time that an industry-repping group has expanded their means for identifying member-copyrighted content to additional sites without telling anyone.

After all, if they've identified a content host where lots of infringement happens for them and their licensees, and they can secure an agreement with the host to leverage the licensor's CID algo, tipping their hand to that fact would just harm the margins for all involved.